Method and system for updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space

ABSTRACT

The present teaching relates to updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space. In one example, an initial intent space is obtained. Each intent in the initial intent space is characterized in one or more dimensions. At least one model is received. Each of the at least one model provides features in each of the dimensions and relationship thereof. A new intent associated with an intent in the initial intent space is determined based on the at least one model. Based on the new intent, the initial intent space is updated to derive an updated intent space.

BACKGROUND

1. Technical Field

The present teaching generally relates to organizing, retrieving, presenting, and utilizing information. Specifically, the present teaching relates to methods and systems for updating an intent space and estimating intent.

2. Discussion of Technical Background

The Internet has made it possible for a person to electronically access virtually any content at any time and from any location. The Internet technology facilitates information publishing, information sharing, and data exchange in various spaces and among different persons. One problem associated with the rapid growth of the Internet is the so-called “information explosion,” which is the rapid increase in the amount of available information and the effects of this abundance. As the amount of available information grows, the problem of managing the information becomes more difficult, which can lead to information overload. With the explosion of information, it has become more and more important to provide users with information from a public space that is relevant to the individual person and not just information in general.

In addition to the public space such as the Internet, semi-private spaces including social media and data sharing sites have become another important source where people can obtain and share information in their daily lives. The continuous and rapid growth of social media and data sharing sites in the past decade has significantly impacted the lifestyles of many; people spend more and more time on chatting and sharing information with their social connections in the semi-private spaces or use such semi-private sources as additional means for obtaining information and entertainment. Similar to what has happened in the public space, information explosion has also become an issue in the social media space, especially in managing and retrieving information in an efficient and organized manner.

Private space is another data source used frequently in people's everyday lives. For example, personal emails in Yahoo! mail, Gmail, Outlook etc. and personal calendar events are considered as private sources because they are only accessible to a person when she or he logs in using private credentials. Although most information in a person's private space may be relevant to the person, it is organized in a segregated manner. For example, a person's emails may be organized by different email accounts and stored locally in different email applications or remotely at different email servers. As such, to get a full picture of some situation related to, e.g., some event, a person often has to search different private spaces to piece everything together. For example, to check with a friend of the actual arrival time for a dinner, one may have to first check a particular email (in the email space) from the friend indicating the time the friend will arrive, and then go to Contacts (a different private space) to search for the friend's contact information before making a call to the friend to confirm the actual arrival time. This is not convenient.

The segregation of information occurs not only in the private space, but also in the semi-private and public spaces. This has led to another consequential problem given the information explosion: requiring one to constantly look for information across different segregated spaces to piece everything together due to lack of meaningful connections among pieces of information that are related in actuality yet isolated in different segregated spaces.

Efforts have been made to organize the huge amount of available information to assist a person to find the relevant information. Conventional scheme of such effort is application-centric and/or domain-centric. Each application carves out its own subset of information in a manner that is specific to the application and/or specific to a vertical or domain. For example, such attempt is either dedicated to a particular email account (e.g., www.Gmail.com) or specific to an email vertical (e.g., Outlook); a traditional web topical portal allows users to access information in a specific vertical, such as www.IMDB.com in the movies domain and www.ESPN.com in the sports domain. In practice, however, a person often has to go back and forth between different applications, sometimes across different spaces, in order to complete a task because of the segregated and unorganized nature of information existing in various spaces. Moreover, even within a specific vertical, the enormous amount of information makes it tedious and time consuming to find the desired information.

Another line of effort is directed to organizing and providing information in an interest-centric manner. For example, user groups of social media in a semi-private space may be formed by common interests among the group members so that they can share information that is likely to be of interest to each other. Web portals in the public space start to build user profiles for individuals and recommend content based on an individual person's interests, either declared or inferred. The effectiveness of interest-centric information organization and recommendation is highly relied on the accuracy of user profiling. Oftentimes, however, a person may not like to declare her/his interests, whether in a semi-private space or a public space. In that case, the accuracy of user profiling can only be relied on estimation, which can be questionable. Accordingly, neither of the application-centric, domain-centric, and interest-centric ways works well in dealing with the information explosion challenge.

FIG. 1 depicts a traditional scheme of information organization and retrieval in different spaces in a segregated and disorganized manner. A person 102 has to interact with information in private space 104, semi-private space 106, and public space 108 via unrelated and separate means 110, 112, 114, respectively. For accessing private data from the private space 104, means 110, such as email applications, email sites, local or remote Contacts and calendars, etc., has to be selected and used. Each means 110 is domain or application-oriented, allowing the person 102 to access information related to the domain with the specific application that the means 110 is developed for. Even for information residing within different applications/domains in the private space 104, a person 102 still has to go by different means 110 to access content of each application/domain, which is not convenient and not person-centric. For example, in order to find out the phone numbers of attendees of a birthday party, the person 102 has to first find all the confirmation emails from the attendees (may be sent in different emails and even to different email accounts), write down each name, and open different Contacts to look for their phone numbers.

Similarly, for interacting with the semi-private space 106, a person 102 needs to use a variety of means 112, each of which is developed and dedicated for a specific semi-private data source. For example, Facebook desktop application, Facebook mobile app, and Facebook site are all means for accessing information in the person 102's Facebook account. But when the person 102 wants to open any document shared on Dropbox by a Facebook friend, the person 102 has to switch to another means dedicated to Dropbox (a desktop application, a mobile app, or a website). As shown in FIG. 1, information may be transmitted between the private space 104 and the semi-private space 106. For instance, private photos can be uploaded to a social media site for sharing with friends; social media or data sharing sites may send private emails to a person 102's private email account notifying her/him of status updates of social friends. However, such information exchange does not automatically create any linkage between data between the private and semi-private spaces 104, 106. Thus, there is no application that can keep track of such information exchange and establish meaningful connections, much less utilizing the connections to make it easier to search for information.

As to the public space 108, means 114 such as traditional search engines (e.g., www.Google.com) or web portals (e.g., www.CNN.com, www.AOL.com, www.IMDB.com, etc.) are used to access information. With the increasing challenge of information explosion, various efforts have been made to assist a person 102 to efficiently access relevant and on-the-point content from the public space 108. For example, topical portals have been developed that are more domain-oriented as compared to generic content gathering systems such as traditional search engines. Examples include topical portals on finance, sports, news, weather, shopping, music, art, movies, etc. Such topical portals allow the person 102 to access information related to subject matters that these portals are directed to. Vertical search has also been implemented by major search engines to help to limit the search results within a specific domain, such as images, news, or local results. However, even if limiting the search result to a specific domain in the public space 108, there is still an enormous amount of available information, putting much burden on the person 102 to identify desired information.

There is also information flow among the public space 108, the semi-private space 106, and the private space 104. For example, www.FedeEx.com (public space) may send a private email to a person 102's email account (private space) with a tracking number; a person 102 may include URLs of public websites in her/his tweets to followers. However, in reality, it is easy to lose track of related information residing in different spaces. When needed, much effort is needed to dig them out based on memory via separate means 110, 112, 114 across different spaces 104, 106, 108. In today's society, this consumes more and more people's time.

Because information residing in different spaces or even within the same space is organized in a segregated manner and can only be accessed via dedicated means, the identification and presentation of information from different sources (whether from the same or different spaces) cannot be made in a coherent and unified manner. For example, when a person 102 searches for information using a query in different spaces, the results yielded in different search spaces are different. For instance, search result from a conventional search engine directed to the public space 108 is usually a search result page with “blue links,” while a search in the email space based on the same query will certainly look completely different. When the same query is used for search in different social media applications in the semi-private space 106, each application will again likely organize and present the search result in a distinct manner. Such inconsistency affects user experience. Further, related information residing in different sources is retrieved piece meal so that it requires the person 102 to manually connect the dots provide a mental picture of the overall situation.

Therefore, there is a need for improvements over the conventional approaches to organize, retrieve, present, and utilize information.

SUMMARY

The present teaching relates to methods, systems, and programming for updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space.

In one example, a method, implemented on at least one computing device each having at least one processor, storage, and a communication platform connected to a network for updating an intent space is presented. An initial intent space is obtained. Each intent in the initial intent space is characterized in one or more dimensions. At least one model is received. Each of the at least one model provides features in each of the dimensions and relationship thereof. A new intent associated with an intent in the initial intent space is determined based on the at least one model. Based on the new intent, the initial intent space is updated to derive an updated intent space.

In another example, a method, implemented on at least one computing device each having at least one processor, storage, and a communication platform connected to a network for estimating intent based on an intent space having a plurality of dimensions is presented. An input is received from a person. The input is analyzed to determine one or more features related to at least one dimension of the intent space. An intent in the intent space is determined based on the one or more features.

Other concepts relate to software for implementing the present teaching on updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space. A software product, in accord with this concept, includes at least one non-transitory machine-readable medium and information carried by the medium. The information carried by the medium may be executable program code data, parameters in association with the executable program code, and/or information related to a user, a request, content, or information related to a social group, etc.

In one example, a non-transitory, machine-readable medium having information recorded thereon for updating an intent space is presented. The recorded information, when read by the machine, causes the machine to perform a series of processes. An initial intent space is obtained. Each intent in the initial intent space is characterized in one or more dimensions. At least one model is received. Each of the at least one model provides features in each of the dimensions and relationship thereof. A new intent associated with an intent in the initial intent space is determined based on the at least one model. Based on the new intent, the initial intent space is updated to derive an updated intent space.

In another example, a non-transitory machine readable medium having information recorded thereon for estimating intent based on an intent space having a dimension is presented. The recorded information, when read by the machine, causes the machine to perform a series of processes. An input is received from a person. The input is analyzed to determine one or more features related to at least one dimension of the intent space. An intent in the intent space is determined based on the one or more features.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The methods, systems, and/or programming described herein are further described in terms of exemplary embodiments. These exemplary embodiments are described in detail with reference to the drawings. These embodiments are non-limiting exemplary embodiments, in which like reference numerals represent similar structures throughout the several views of the drawings, and wherein:

FIG. 1 (prior art) depicts a traditional scheme of information organization and retrieval from different spaces in a segregated and disorganized manner;

FIG. 2 depicts a novel scheme of building a person-centric space for a person by cross-linking data from different spaces and applications thereof, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 3 illustrates exemplary types of data sources in a private space;

FIG. 4 illustrates exemplary types of data sources in a semi-private space;

FIG. 5 depicts an exemplary system diagram of a person-centric INDEX system, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 6 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for building a person-centric space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for applying a person-centric space for digital personal assistance, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 8 depicts an exemplary scheme of building a person-centric space for each individual person via a person-centric INDEX system and applications thereof, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 9 depicts an exemplary scheme in which a variety of dynamic cards are built and provided to a person based on different intents estimated for the same query in different contexts, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 10 illustrates an exemplary answer card, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 11 illustrates an exemplary search results card, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 12 depicts an exemplary scheme of automatic online order email summary and package tracking via cross-linked data in a person-centric space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 13 illustrates an exemplary task with a list of task actions for automatic package tracking;

FIG. 14 illustrates a series of exemplary cards provided to a person in the process of automatic online order email summary and package tracking;

FIG. 15 illustrates exemplary entities extracted from a person-centric space and their relationships established in the process of automatic online order email summary and package tracking;

FIG. 16 illustrates an exemplary intent space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 17 depicts an exemplary scheme of combining personal intent spaces into a common intent space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 18 depicts an exemplary system diagram of an intent engine including an intent estimator and an intent database builder, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 19 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for an intent estimator, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 20 is a flowchart of another exemplary process for an intent estimator, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 21 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for an intent database builder, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 22 is a flowchart of another exemplary process for an intent database builder, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 23 illustrates an exemplary domain taxonomy, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 24 illustrates an exemplary action graph, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 25 depicts an exemplary scheme of teaching new intent by experts, according to an embodiment of the present teaching;

FIG. 26 depicts the architecture of a mobile device which can be used to implement a specialized system incorporating the present teaching; and

FIG. 27 depicts the architecture of a computer which can be used to implement a specialized system incorporating the present teaching.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are set forth by way of examples in order to provide a thorough understanding of the relevant teachings. However, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present teachings may be practiced without such details. In other instances, well known methods, procedures, components, and/or circuitry have been described at a relatively high level, without detail, in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring aspects of the present teachings.

The present teaching describes methods, systems, and programming aspects of efficiently and effectively organizing, retrieving, presenting, and utilizing information.

FIG. 2 depicts a novel scheme of building a person-centric space 200 for a person 102 by cross-linking data from different spaces and applications thereof, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Unlike the traditional approach to organize information in different spaces in a segregated and disorganized manner, as illustrated in FIG. 1, FIG. 2 provides a person-centric INDEX system 202, which builds the person-centric space 200 specific to the person 102 by digesting information from the public space 108, semi-private space 106, and private space 104 and cross-linking relevant data from those spaces 104, 106, 108. As described herein, a person 102 referred herein may include a human being, a group of people, an organization such as a business department or a corporation, or any unit that can use the person-centric INDEX system 202. A space, whether private, semi-private, or public, may be a collection of information in one or more sources. Through the person-centric INDEX system 202, information relevant to the person 102 from each of the private, semi-private, and public spaces 104, 106, and 108 is projected, into the person-centric space 200 in a meaningful manner. That is, a part of the data in the person-centric space 200 is projected from the public space 108 in a manner relevant to the person 102; a part of the data in the person-centric space 200 is projected from the semi-private space 106 in a manner relevant to the person 102; a part of the data in the person-centric space 200 is projected from the private space 104. Thus, the person-centric space 200 is an information universe meaningful to the person 102 and formed from the perspective of the person 102.

Different from conventional approaches, which organize information in an application-centric, domain-centric, or interest-centric manner, the person-centric INDEX system 202 recognizes relevant information from the enormous information available in the public space 108, semi-private space 106, and private space 104 in accordance with the perspective of the person 102, thereby filtering out information that is not relevant to the person 102, assisting the person 102 to make sense out of the relevance among different pieces of information in the person-centric space. The person-centric space 200 is dynamic and changes with the online (possibly offline) activities of the person 102. For example, the person 102 can search more content via the person-centric INDEX system 202 (this function may be similar to conventional search engine) that will lead to the continuously expansion of the person-centric space 200. The person-centric INDEX system 202 can cross-link data across information different spaces, or information from different sources in the same space. For instance, by identifying a FedEx tracking number in an order confirmation email sent to a personal email account from www.Amazon.com, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can automatically search for any information in any space that is relevant to the tracking number, such as package delivery status information from www.FedEx.com in the public space 108. Although most information from www.FedEx.com may not be related to the person 102, the particular package delivery status information relevant to the person 102 and can be retrieved by the person-centric INDEX system 202 and indexed against the information from the person 102's private emails. In other words, the package delivery status information, even though from the public space 108, can be projected into the person-centric space 200 and, together with other information in the person-centric space 200 (such as a confirmation email related to the package), the person-centric INDEX system 202 integrates relevant information from different sources to yield unified and semantically meaningful information, such as a card related to an order incorporating the name of the ordered item, the name of the person who ordered it, the name of the company that is to deliver the item, as well as the current delivery status.

In another example, when a private email reminding of an upcoming soccer game from a coach is received, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may be triggered to process the private email and identify, based on the content of the email, certain information in the sports domain such as date/time, location, and players and coaches of the soccer game and cross link the email with such information. The person-centric INDEX system 202 may also retrieve additional relevant information from other data sources, such as phone number of the coach from Contacts of the person 102. The person-centric INDEX system 202 may also retrieve map and directions to the soccer game stadium from Google Maps based on the location information and retrieve weather forecast of the game from www.Weather.com based on the date. If the coach is connected with the person 102 in any social media, then the person-centric INDEX system 202 may go to the social media site in the semi-private space 106 to retrieve any content made by the coach that is relevant to the soccer game. In this example, all those different pieces of information from the public space 108, semi-private space 106, and private space 104 are cross-linked and projected to the person-centric space 200 in accordance with the person 102's perspective on the soccer game.

The person-centric INDEX system 202 may build the initial person-centric space 200 when the person 102 first time accesses the person-centric INDEX system 202. By analyzing all the information in the private space 104 which the person 102 has granted access permission, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can identify, retrieve, and link relevant information from the public space 108, semi-private space 106, and private space 104 and project them into the person-centric space 200. As mentioned above, the person-centric INDEX system 202 also maintains and updates the person-centric space 200 in a continuous or dynamic manner. In one example, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may automatically check any change, either in the private space 104 or otherwise, based on a schedule and initiates the update of the person-centric space 200 when necessary. For example, every two hours, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may automatically check any new email that has not been analyzed before. In another example, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may automatically check any change occurring in the public space 108 and the semi-private space 106 that is relevant to the person 102. For instance, in the soccer game example descried above, every day before the scheduled soccer game, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may automatically check www.Weather.com to see if the weather forecast needs to be updated. The person-centric INDEX system 202 may also update the person-centric space 200 responsive to some triggering event that may affect any data in the person-centric space 200. For example, in the FedEx package example described above, once the scheduled delivery date has passed or a package delivery email has been received, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may update the person-centric space 200 to remove the temporary relationship between the person 102 and www.FedEx.com until a new connection between them is established again in the future. The triggering event is not limited to events happening in the public space 108, semi-private space 106, or private space 104, but can include any internal operation of the person-centric INDEX system 202. As an example, every time the person-centric INDEX system 202 performs a search in response to a query or to answer a question, it may also trigger the person-centric INDEX system 202 to update the person-centric space 200 based on, e.g., newly retrieved information related to, e.g., a search result or some answers. When the search result or answers cannot be found in the person-centric space 200, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may also update the person-centric space 200 to include those search results and answers. That is, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may dynamically update the person-centric space 200 in response to any suitable triggering events.

To better understand information in the person-centric space 200 and make it meaningful, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may further build a person-centric knowledge database including person-centric knowledge by extracting and associating data about the person 102 from the person-centric space 200. The person-centric INDEX system 202 can extract entities related to the person 102 and infer relationships between the entities without the person 102's explicit declaration. A person-centric knowledge representation for the person 102 can be created by person-centric INDEX system 202 the based on the entities and relationships. The inference can be based on any information in the person-centric space 200. The knowledge elements that can be inferred or deduced may include the person 102's social contacts, the person 102's relationships with places, events, etc.

In order to construct the person-centric knowledge representation, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may extract entities from content in the person 102's person-centric space 200. These entities can be places like restaurants or places of interest, contact mentions like names, emails, phone numbers or addresses, and events with date, place and persons involved. In addition to extracting these mentions, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can resolve them to what they refer to (i.e. can disambiguate an extracted entity when it may refer to multiple individuals). For example, a word “King” in a private email may refer to a title of a person who is the King of a country or refer to a person's last name. The person-centric INDEX system 202 may utilize any information in the person-centric space 200 to determine what type of entity the word “King” refers to in the email. In addition to determining an entity type for an extracted entity name, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may also determine a specific individual referred to by this entity name. As one instance, a person's first name may refer to different Contacts, and a same restaurant name can refer to several restaurants. The person-centric INDEX system 202 can make use of contextual information and/or textual metadata associated with the entity name in the email to disambiguate such cases, thereby providing a high precision resolution. With the precise disambiguation, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can find right information from unstructured personal data and provide it in a structured way (e.g. in a graph associated with the person 102). In contrast to a conventional personal profile, the person-centric INDEX system 202 generates a single personal graph for an individual to encompass connections, interests, and events associated with the person 102. It can be understood that a person-centric knowledge may also be represented in a format other than a graph.

The person-centric INDEX system 202, in conjunction with the person-centric space 200, may organize related information from different sources and provide the information to a person 102 in a user-friendly, unified presentation style. In addition to providing requested information in any known format, such as hyperlinks on a search results page, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may present information in intent-based cards. Unlike existing entity-based search results cards organizing results based on an entity, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may focus on a person 102's intent to dynamically build a card for the person 102. The intent may be explicitly specified in the query, or estimated based on the context, trending events, or any knowledge derived from the person-centric space 200. Knowing the person 102's intent when the card is created to answer the query, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can provide relevant information on the card. The relevant information may include partial information associated with the entity in the query, and/or additional information from the person-centric space 200 that is related to the person's intent. In the soccer game example descried above, in response to the person's query or question related to the soccer game, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may estimate the person's intent is to know the date/time of the game and thus, build a card that includes not only the direct answer of the date/time but also other information related to the soccer game in the person-centric space 200, such as the map and directions, weather forecast, and contact information of the coach.

In one embodiment, knowing the current intent of the person 102, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can anticipate the next intent of the person 102, such that the current card provided by the person-centric INDEX system 202 can lead to next steps. For example, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can anticipate that after looking at the show times of a new movie, the person 102 will be likely to buy tickets. In another embodiment, focusing on the person 102's intent, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can answer the person 102 with a card even when there is no entity in the query or request (i.e., in a query-less or anticipatory use case). For example, if the person-centric INDEX system 202 determines that the person 102 has a behavior pattern of searching traffic information from work place to home at 5 pm on workdays, then from now on, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may automatically generate and provide a notice card to the person 102 at around 5 pm on every workday, to notify the person 102 about the traffic information regardless whether a query is received from the person 102.

The person-centric INDEX system 202 can be used for both building the person-centric space 200 for a person 102 and facilitating the person 102 to apply the person-centric space 200 in a variety for applications. Instead of using different means 110, 112, 114 shown in FIG. 1 to access different data sources across different spaces, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can serve as a centralized interface between the person 102 and her/his own person-centric space 200, thereby reducing the time and efforts spent by the person 102 on retrieving desired information or any other applications. As different pieces of relevant information from the public space 108, semi-private space 106, and private space 104 have been projected to the person-centric space 200 in a well-organized way, they can be handled by a single person-centric INDEX system 202, thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness in finding the desired information. For example, in the FedEx package example described above, any time the person wants to know the current status of the package, she/he no longer needs to dig out the email with the tracking number, write down the tracking number, and open www.FedEx.com in a browser and type in the tracking number. The person-centric INDEX system 202 may have already stored the package delivery status information since the time when the initial order email was received and have kept updating the package delivery status information in the person-centric space 200. So any time when the person 102 inputs a request for package delivery status update, either in the form of a search query or a question n, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can go directly to retrieve the updated package delivery status information from the person-centric space 200 or automatically call the tracking application programming interface (API) of FedEx server with the stored tracking number for the current status update. The result is then provided to the person 102 without any additional efforts made by the person 102. In some embodiments, the person 102 may not even need to explicitly request the status update. Responsive to receiving the order confirmation email, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may automatically set up a task to regularly send the status update to the person 102 until the package is delivered or may dynamically notify the person 102 with any event, like if the package is delayed or lost.

In one aspect of the present teaching, the person-centric INDEX system 202, in conjunction with the person-centric space 200, can be used for answering questions. To achieve this, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may classify a question from a person 102 into a personal question or a non-personal question. In some embodiment, data from the person-centric space 200 may be for classification. For example, a question related to “uncle Sam” may be classified as a personal question if “uncle Sam” is a real person identified from the private Contacts. Once the question is classified as personal, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may extract various features including entities and relationships from the question. The extracted entities and relationships may be used by the person-centric INDEX system 202 to traverse a person-centric knowledge database derived from the person-centric space 200. In some embodiments, the person-centric knowledge database may store data in a triple format including one or more entities and relationships between the one or more entities. When an exact match of relationship and entity are found, an answer is returned. When there is no exact match, a similarity between the question and answer triples is taken into consideration and used to find the candidate answers. In the “uncle Sam” example described above, if the question is “where is uncle Sam,” the person-centric INDEX system 202 may search the person-centric knowledge database for any location entity that has a valid relationship with the entity “uncle Sam.” In one example, a recent email may be sent by “uncle Sam,” and the email may also mention that he will be attending a conference on these days. The location of the conference can be retrieved from the conference website in the public space 108, stored in the person-centric space 200, and associated with entity “uncle Sam.” Based on the relationship, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can answer the question with the location of the conference. The person-centric INDEX system 202 thus provides an efficient solution to search for answers to personal questions and increases user engagement and content understanding.

In another aspect of the present teaching, the person-centric INDEX system 202, in conjunction with the person-centric space 200, can be used for task completion. Task completion often involves interactions with different data sources across different spaces. A task such as “making mother's day dinner reservation” involves task actions such as identifying who is my mother, checking what date is mother's day this year, finding out a mutually available time slot on mother's day for my mother and me, picking up a restaurant that my mother and I like, making an online reservation on the restaurant's website, etc. Traditionally, in order to complete each task action, a person 102 has to open a number of applications to access information from different sources across different spaces and perform a series of tedious operations, such as searching for “mother's day 2015” in a search engine, checking my own calendar and mother's shared calendar, digging out past emails about the restaurant reservations for dinners with my mother, making online reservation via a browser, etc. In contrast to the traditional approaches for task completion, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can complete the same task more efficiently and effectively because all pieces of information related to mother's day dinner reservation have already been projected to the person-centric space 200. This makes automatic task generation and completion using the person-centric INDEX system 202 possible. In response to receiving an input of “making mother's day dinner reservation” from a person 102, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can automatically generate the list of task actions as mentioned above and execute each of them based on information from the person-centric space 200 and update the person 102 with the current status of completing the task.

With the dynamic and rich information related to the person 102 that is available in the person-centric space 200, the person-centric INDEX system 202 can even automatically generate a task without any input from the person 102. In one embodiment, anytime a card is generated and provided to the person 102, the information on the card may be analyzed by the person-centric INDEX system 202 to determine whether a task needs to be generated as a follow-up of the card. For example, once an email card summarizing an online order is constructed, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may generate a task to track the package delivery status until it is delivered and notify any status update for the person 102. In another embodiment, any event occurring in the public space 108, semi-private space 106, or private space 104 that is relevant to the person 102 may trigger the task completion as well. For instance, a flight delay message on an airline website in the public space 108 may trigger generation of a task for changing hotel, rental car, and restaurant reservations in the same trip. In still another embodiment, the person 102's past behavior patterns may help the person-centric INDEX system 202 to anticipate her/his intent in the similar context and automatically generate a task accordingly. As an instance, if the person 102 always had a dinner with her/his mother on mother's day at the same restaurant, a task may be generated by the person-centric INDEX system 202 this year, in advance, to make the mother's day dinner reservation at the same restaurant.

It is understood that in some occasions, certain task actions may not be completed solely based on information from the person-centric space 200. For example, in order to complete the task “sending flowers to mom on mother's day,” flower shops need to be reached out to. In one embodiment of the present teaching, a task exchange platform may be created to facilitate the completion of tasks. The person-centric INDEX system 202 may send certain tasks or task actions to the task exchange platform so that parties interested in completing the task may make bids on it. The task exchange platform alone, or in conjunction with the person-centric INDEX system 202, may select the winning bid and update the person 102 with the current status of task completion. Monetization of task completion may be achieved by charging service fee to the winning party and/or the person 102 who requests the task.

In still another aspect of the present teaching, the person-centric INDEX system 202, in conjunction with the person-centric space 200, can be used for query suggestions. By processing and analyzing data from the person-centric space 200, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may build a user corpus database, which provides suggestions based on information from the private space 104 and/or semi-private space 106. In response to any input from a person 102, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may process the input and provide suggestions to the person 102 at runtime based on the person 102's relevant private and/or semi-private data from the user corpus database as well other general log-based query suggestion database and search history database. The query suggestions may be provided to the person 102 with very low latency (e.g., less than 10 ms) in response to the person 102's initial input. Further, in some embodiments, before presenting to the person 102, suggestions generated using the person 102's private and/or semi-private data from the user corpus database may be blended with suggestions produced based on general log-based query suggestion database and search history database. Such blended suggestions may be filtered and ranked based on various factors, such as type of content suggested (e.g., email, social media information, etc.), estimated intent based on an immediate previous input from the person 102, context (e.g., location, data/time, etc.) related to the person 102, and/or other factors.

FIG. 3 illustrates exemplary types of data sources in a private space. The private space of a person may include any data source that is private to the person. For example, the private space may include any data source that requires access information of the person (e.g., password, token, biometric information, or any user credentials). The private space may also include any data source that is intended to be accessed only by the person even without requiring access control, such as data on a person's smart phone that does not require password or finger print verification. In this illustration, the private space includes several categories of data sources such as emails, Contacts, calendars, instant messaging, photos, usage records, bookmarks, etc. Emails include emails stored in remote email servers such as Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. and local emails in an email application on a personal computer or mobile device. Instant messaging includes any messages communicated between the person 102 and others via any instant messaging applications, for example, Yahoo! Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat, to name a few. Usage records may be any logs private to the person, such as, but not limited to, browsing history and call records. It is understood that the examples described above are for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 4 illustrates exemplary types of data sources in a semi-private space. The semi-private space of a person may include any data source that is accessible for a group of people designated by the person. One example of data sources in the semi-private space is social media, such as Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. A person can designate a group of people who can access her/his information shared in the social media sites, such as status updates, posts, photos, and comments. Another example of data sources in the semi-private space is a content sharing site. For instance, a person can share photos with family and friends at Flickr, share work documents with colleagues or classmates at Google Docs, and share any files at Dropbox. It is understood that in some cases, there is not a clear boundary between a data source in the private space and a data source in the semi-private space. For instance, if a person restricts photos at Flickr to be only accessible by her/himself, then Flickr becomes a private source of the person, just like local photos stored on the person's device. Similarly, when the entire or a portion of a calendar is shared with others, the calendar becomes part of the semi-private space. It is understood that the examples described above are for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 5 depicts an exemplary system diagram of the person-centric INDEX system 202, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. The person-centric INDEX system 202 includes a user interface 502 that connects a person 102 with multiple front-end components including a suggestion engine 504, a query interface 506, a Q/A interface 508, a task interface 510, and a contextual information identifier 512 coupled with a user database 514. To support the front-end components, the person-centric INDEX system 202 further includes multiple functional components including a search engine 516, a Q/A engine 518, a task generation engine 520, a task completion engine 522, an intent engine 524, a person-centric knowledge retriever 526, and a dynamic card builder 528. In the back-end, the person-centric INDEX system 202 includes a variety of databases for storing information in different forms for different purposes, such as the person-centric space 200 having a public database 544, a semi-private database 546, and a private database 548. The person-centric space 200 in this embodiment is built up by a cross-linking engine 542. The person-centric INDEX system 202 further includes a knowledge engine 530 for building a person-centric knowledge database 532 by processing and analyzing information in the person-centric space 200. In addition, additional types of analytic results from the knowledge engine 530 based on data from the person-centric space 200 and/or any other suitable data sources may be stored in an intent database 534, a card module database 536, and a task template database 538.

A person 102 may interact with the person-centric INDEX system 202 via the user interface 502 by providing an input. The input may be made by, for example, typing in a query, question, or task request, or clicking or touching any user interface element in the user interface 502 to enter a query, question, or task request. With each input from the person 102, the suggestion engine 504 provides a list of suggestions to facilitate the person 102 to complete the entire input. In this embodiment, the suggestion engine 504 may provide suggestions based on the person's private and/or semi-private information retrieved by the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 from the person-centric space 200 and/or the person-centric knowledge database 532. Those suggestions include, for example, a contact name from the private Contacts, part of a tweet from Twitter, or a package tracking status stored in the person-centric space 200. In some embodiments, the suggestion engine 504 may blend those suggestions based on the person 102's private and/or semi-private information with the conventional suggestions based on popular query logs and search history. In this embodiment, the intent engine 524 may provide an estimated intent associated with each input to help filtering and/or ranking the suggestions provided to the person 102.

Each of the query interface 506, Q/A interface 508, and task interface 510 is configured to receive a particular type of user inputs and forward them to the respective engine for handling. Once the results are returned from the respective engine and/or from the dynamic card builder 528, each of the query interface 506, Q/A interface 508, and task interface 510 forwards the results to the user interface 502 for presentation. In one embodiment, the user interface 502 may first determine the specific type of each input and then dispatch it to the corresponding interface. For example, the user interface 502 may identify that an input is a question based on semantic analysis or keyword matching (e.g., looking for keywords like “why” “when” “who,” etc. and/or a question mark). The identified question is then dispatched to the Q/A interface 508. Similarly, the user interface 502 may determine, based on semantic analysis and/or machine learning algorithms, that an input is a task request and forward the input to the task interface 510. For any input that cannot be classified or does not fall within the categories of question and task request, the user interface 502 may forward it to the query interface 506 for general query search. It is understood that, in some embodiments, the user interface 502 may not classify an input first, but instead, forward the same input to each of the query interface 506, Q/A interface 508, and task interface 510 to have their respective engines to process the input in parallel.

Another function of the user interface 502 involves presenting information to the person 102 either as responses to the inputs, such as search results, answers, and task status, or as spontaneous notices, reminders, and updates in response to any triggering events. In this embodiment, the information to be presented to the person 102 via the user interface 502 may be presented in the form of cards that are dynamically built on-the-fly by the dynamic card builder 528 based on the intent estimated by the intent engine 524. The cards may be of different types, such as an email card summarizing one or more related emails, a search results card summarizing information relevant to one or more search results, an answer card including an answer to a question with additional information associated with the answer, or a notice card that is automatically generated to notify the person 102 of any event of interest. Based on its type, a card may be dispatched to one of the query interface 506, Q/A interface 508, and task interface 510 and eventually presented to the person 102 via the user interface 502. In addition to cards, information in any other format or presentation styles, such as search results in a research results page with “blue links” or answers in plain text, may be provided by the search engine 516 and the Q/A engine 518 directly to the query interface 506 and Q/A interface 508, respectively. It is understood that the user interface 502 may also provide information in a hybrid matter, meaning that some information may be presented as cards, while other information may be presented in its native format or style.

As the user interface 502 receives an input from the person 102, it also triggers the contextual information identifier 512 to collect any contextual information related to the person 102 and the input of the person 102. The contextual information identifier 512 in this embodiment receives user-related information from the user database 514, such as the person 102's demographic information and declared and inferred interests and preferences. Another source of contextual information is the person 102's device including, for example, date/time obtained from the timer of the person 102's device, location obtained from a global positioning system (GPS) of the person 102's device, and information related to the person 102's device itself (e.g., the device type, brand, and specification). Further, the contextual information identifier 512 may also receive contextual information from the user interface 502, such as one or more inputs immediately before the current input (i.e., user-session information). Various components in the person-centric INDEX system 202, including the cross-linking engine 542, knowledge engine 530, and intent engine 524, may take advantage of the contextual information identified by the contextual information identifier 512.

The intent engine 524 in this embodiment has two major functions: creating and updating the intent database 534 and estimating an intent based on the information stored in the intent database 534. The intent database 534 may store a personal intent space which includes all the intents that make sense to the person 102 in the form of an action plus a domain. For example, based on the person 102's search history, the intent engine 524 may identify that the person 102 has repeatedly entered different queries all related to the same intent “making restaurant reservations.” This intent then may be stored as a data point in the person's personal intent space in the intent database 534 in the form of {action=making reservations; domain=restaurant}. More and more data points will be filled into the personal intent space as the person 102 continues interacting with the person-centric INDEX system 202. In some embodiments, the intent engine 524 may also update the personal intent space in the intent database 534 by adding new intents based on existing intents. For instance, the intent engine 524 may determine that hotel is a domain that is close to the restaurant domain and thus, a new intent “making hotel reservations” (in the form of {action=making reservations; domain=hotel}) likely makes sense to the person 102 as well. The new intent “making hotel reservations,” which is not determined from user data directly, may be added to the personal intent space in the intent database 534 by the intent engine 524. In some embodiments, the intent database 534 include a common intent space for the general population. Some intents that are not in the personal intent space may exist in the common intent space. If they are popular among the general population or among people similar to the person 102, then the intent engine 524 may consider those intents as candidates as well in intent estimation.

In estimating intent of the person 102, the intent engine 524 receives the input from the user interface 502 or any information retrieved by the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 and tries to identify any action and/or domain from the input that is also in the intent spaces in the intent database 534. If both action and domain can be identified from the input, then an intent can be derived directly from the intent space. Otherwise, the intent engine 524 may need to take the contextual information from the contextual information identifier 512 to filter and/or rank the intent candidates identified from the intent space based on the action or domain. In one example, if the input involves only the action “making reservations” without specifying the domain, the intent engine 524 may first identify a list of possible domains that can be combined with such action according to the personal intent space, such as “hotel” and “restaurant.” By further identifying that the location where the input is made is at a hotel, the intent engine 524 may estimate that the person 102 likely intends to make restaurant reservations as he is already in the hotel. It is understood that in some cases, neither action nor domain can be identified from the input or the identified action or domain does not exist in the intent space, the intent engine 524 may estimate the intent purely based on the available contextual information. Various components in the person-centric INDEX system 202, including the search engine 516, the suggestion engine 504, the dynamic card builder 528, and the person-centric knowledge retriever 526, may take advantage of the intent estimated by the intent engine 524.

The search engine 516 in this embodiment receives a search query from the query interface 506 and performs a general web search or a vertical search in the public space 108. Intent estimated by the intent engine 524 for the search query may be provided to the search engine 516 for purposes such as query disambiguation and search results filtering and ranking In some embodiments, some or all of the search results may be returned to the query interface 506 in their native format (e.g., hyperlinks) so that they can be presented to the person 102 on a conventional search results page. In this embodiment, some or all of the search results are fed into the dynamic card builder 528 for building a dynamic search results card based on the estimated intent. For instance, if the intent of the query “make reservation” is estimated as “making restaurant reservations,” then the top search result of a local restaurant may be provided to the dynamic card builder 528 for building a search results card with the name, directions, menu, phone number, and reviews of the restaurant.

The Q/A engine 518 in this embodiment receives a question from the Q/A interface 508 and classifies the question into either a personal or non-personal question. The classification may be done based on a model such as a machine learning algorithm. In this embodiment, the Q/A engine 518 may check the person-centric knowledge database 532 and/or the private database 548 and semi-private database 546 in the person-centric space 200 via the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 to see if the question is related to any private, semi-private data, or personal knowledge of the person 102. For instance, the question “who is Taylor Swift” is normally classified as a non-personal question. But in the case if “Taylor Swift” is in the person 102's Contacts or social media friend list, or if “Taylor Swift” has sent emails to the person 102, the Q/A engine 518 then may classify the question as a personal question. For non-personal questions, any known approaches may be used to obtain the answers.

Once the question is classified as personal, various features including entities and relationships are extracted by the Q/A engine 518 from the question using, for example, a machine learned sequence tagger. The extracted entities and relationships are used to traverse, by the person-centric knowledge retriever 526, the person-centric knowledge database 532, which stores person-centric relationships stored in a pre-defined form. In some embodiments, the person-centric relationships may be stored in a triple format including one or more entities and a relationship therebetween. When the Q/A engine 518 finds an exact match of relationship and entity, it returns an answer. When there is no exact match, the Q/A engine 518 takes into consideration a similarity between the question and answer triples and uses the similarity to find the candidate answers. To measure the similarity, words embedded over a large corpus of user texts may be collected and trained by the Q/A engine 518. The well-organized, person-centric information stored in the person-centric space 200 and the person-centric knowledge database 532 makes it possible for the Q/A engine 518 to answer a personal question in a synthetic manner without the need of fully understanding the question itself. The answers generated by the Q/A engine 518 may be provided to the dynamic card builder 528 for building answer cards.

The task generation engine 520 and the task completion engine 522 work together in this embodiment to achieve automatic task generation and completion functions of the person-centric INDEX system 202. The task generation engine 520 may automatically generate a task in response to a variety of triggers, including for example, a task request from the person 120 received via the task interface 510, an answer generated by the Q/A engine 518, a card constructed by the dynamic card builder 528, or an event or behavior pattern related to the person 102 from the person-centric space 200 and/or the person-centric knowledge database 532. Intent may have also been taken into account in some embodiments in task generation. The task generation engine 520 in this embodiment also divides each task into a series of task actions, each of which can be scheduled for execution by the task completion engine 522. The task template database 538 stores templates of tasks in response to different triggers. The task generation engine 520 may also access the task template database 538 to retrieve relevant templates in task generation and update the templates as needed. In some embodiments, the task generation engine 520 may call the dynamic card builder 528 to build a card related to one or more tasks so that the person 102 can check and modify the automatically generated task as desired.

The tasks and task actions are stored into task lists 540 by the task generation engine 520. Each task may be associated with parameters, such as conditions in which the task is to be executed and completed. Each individual task action of a task may also be associated with execution and completion conditions. The task completion engine 522 fetches each task from the task lists 540 and executes it according to the parameter associated therewith. For a task, the task completion engine 522 dispatches each of its task actions to an appropriate executor to execute it, either internally through the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 or externally in the public space 108, semi-private space 106, or private space 104. In one example, task actions such as “finding available time on Tuesday for lunch with mom” can be completed by retrieving calendar information from the private database 548 in the person-centric space 200. In another example, task actions like “ordering flowers from Aunt Mary's flower shop” can only be completed by reaching out to the flower shop in the public space 108. The task completion engine 522 may also schedule the execution of each task action by putting it into a queue. Once certain conditions associated with a task action are met, the assigned executor will start to execute it and report the status. The task completion engine 522 may update the task lists 540 based on the status of each task or task action, for example, by removing completed tasks from the task lists 540. The task completion engine 522 may also provide the status updates to the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 such that the status updates of any ongoing task become available for any component in the person-centric INDEX system 202 as needed. For instance, the dynamic card builder 528 may build a notice card notifying the person that your task request “sending flowers to mom on Mother's day” has been completed.

As a component that supports intent-based dynamic card construction for various front-end components, the dynamic card builder 528 receives requests from the search engine 516, the Q/A engine 518, the task generation engine 520, or the person-centric knowledge retriever 526. In response, the dynamic card builder 528 asks for the estimated intent associated with the request from the intent engine 524. Based on the request and the estimated intent, the dynamic card builder 528 can create a card on-the-fly by selecting suitable card layout and/or modules from the card module database 536. The selection of modules and layouts is not predetermined, but may depend on the request, the intent, the context, and information from the person-centric space 200 and the person-centric knowledge database 532. Even for the same query repeatedly received from the same person 102, completely different cards may be built by the dynamic card builder 528 based on the different estimated intents in different contexts. A card may be created by populating information, such as search results, answers, status updates, or any person-centric information, into the dynamically selected and organized modules. The filling of information into the modules on a card may be done in a centralized manner by the dynamic card builder 528 regardless of the type of the card or may be done at each component where the request is sent. For example, the Q/A engine 518 may receive an answer card construction with dynamically selected and organized modules on it and fill in direct and indirect answers into those modules by itself.

In one embodiment, the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 can search the person-centric space 200 and the person-centric knowledge database 532 for relevant information in response to a search request from the intent engine 524, the query interface, the Q/A engine 518, the suggestion engine 504, the dynamic card builder 528, or the task generation engine 520. The person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may identify one or more entities from the search request and search for the matched entities in the person-centric knowledge database 532. As entities stored in the person-centric knowledge database 532 are connected by relationships, additional entities and relationships associated with the matched entities can be returned as part of the retrieved information as well. As for searching in the person-centric space 200, in one embodiment, the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may first look for private data in the private database 548 matching the entities in the search request. As data in the person-centric space 200 are cross-linked by cross-linking keys, the entities and/or the cross-linking keys associated with the relevant private data may be used for retrieving additional information from the semi-private database 546 and the public database 544. For instance, to handle a search request related to “amazon package,” the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may first look for information in the private database 548 that is relevant to “amazon package.” If an order confirmation email is found in the private database 548, the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may further identify that the order confirmation email is associated with a cross-linking key “tracking number” in the package shipping domain. Based on the tracking number, the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 then can search for any information that is also associated with the same tracking number in the person-centric space 200, such as the package delivery status information from www.FedEx.com in the public database 544. As a result, the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may return both the order confirmation email and the package delivery status information as a response to the search request.

In some embodiments, the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may retrieve relevant information from multiple data sources in parallel and then blend and rank all the retrieved information as a response to the search request. It is understood that information retrieved from each source may be associated with features that are unique for the specific source, such as the feature “the number of recipients that are cc′d” in the email source. In order to be able to blend and rank results from different sources, the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may normalize the features of each result and map them into the same scale for comparison.

The cross-linking engine 542 in this embodiment associates information relevant to the person 102 from the private space 104, the semi-private space 106, and the public space 108 by cross-linking data based on cross-linking keys. The cross-linking engine 542 may first process all information in the private space 104 and identify cross-linking keys from the private space 104. For each piece of content in the private space 104, the cross-linking engine 542 may identify entities and determine the domain to which the content belongs. Based on the domain, one or more entities may be selected as cross-linking keys for this piece of content. In one example, tracking number may be a cross-linking key in the package shipping domain. In another example, flight number, departure city, and departure date may be cross-linking keys in the flight domain. Once one or more cross-linking keys are identified for each piece of information in the private space 104, the cross-linking engine 542 then goes to the semi-private space 106 and the public space 108 to fetch information related to the cross-linking keys. For example, the tracking number may be used to retrieve package delivery status information from www.FedEx.com in the public space 108, and the flight number, departure city, and departure date may be used to retrieve flight status from www.UA.com in the public space 108. Information retrieved by the cross-linking engine 542 from the private space 104, semi-private space 106, and public space 108 may be stored in the private database 548, semi-private database 546, and public database 544 in the person-centric space 200, respectively. As each piece of information in the person-centric space 200 is associated with one or more cross-linking keys, they are cross-linked with other information associated with the same cross-linking keys, regardless which space it comes from. Moreover, as the cross-linking keys are identified based on the person's private data (e.g., emails), all the cross-linked information in the person-centric space 200 are relevant to the person 102.

Although only one database is shown in FIG. 5 for information from the private space 104, the semi-private space 106, or the public space 108, it is understood that information within a particular space may be organized and stored in different databases in the person-centric space 200. For instance, private data from emails, Contacts, calendars, and photos may be stored in separate databases within the private database 548; semi-private data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. may be stored in separate databases within the semi-private database 546 as well. Such arrangement may enable applying different feature extraction models to different data sources, which may be helpful for the suggestion engine 504 and the person-centric knowledge retriever 526. As mentioned above, the cross-linking engine 542 continuously and dynamically maintains and updates the person-centric space 200 on a regular basis and/or in response to any triggering event. For example, any internal operation, such as query search, question answering, or task completion, may trigger the cross-linking engine 542 to update the affected data or add missing data in the person-centric space 200.

The knowledge engine 530 in this embodiment processes and analyzes the information in the person-centric space 200 to derive analytic results in order to better understand the person-centric space 200. In one embodiment, the knowledge engine 530 extracts entities from content in the person-centric space 200 and resolves them to what they refer to (i.e., can disambiguate an extracted entity when it may refer to multiple individuals). In addition to determining an entity type for an extracted entity name, the knowledge engine 530 may also determine a specific individual referred to by this entity name. The knowledge engine 530 can make use of contextual information and/or textual metadata associated with the entity name in the email to disambiguate such cases, providing a high precision resolution.

The knowledge engine 530 also builds a person-centric knowledge representation for a person 102 by extracting and associating data about the person 102 from personal data sources. The person-centric knowledge representation for the person 102 is stored in the person-centric knowledge database 532. The knowledge engine 530 can extract entities related to the person 102 and infer relationships between the entities without the person 102's explicit declaration, and create, for example, a person-centric knowledge graph for the person 102 based on the entities and relationships. The knowledge elements that can be inferred or deduced may include, for example, the person 102's social contacts, and the person 102's relationships with places, events, or other users.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for building a person-centric space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Starting at 602, data from the private space 104 is obtained. The data includes any content that is private to a person, such as emails, Contacts, calendar events, photos, bookmarks, instant messages, usage records, and so on. Contextual information is obtained at 604. The contextual information includes, but is not limited to, user information such as demographic information and interests and preferences, locale information, temporal information, device information, and user-session information (e.g., other user inputs in the same or adjacent user-sessions). At 606, information from the private space data is extracted. The information may be cross-linking keys determined from entities extracted from the private space data based on the domain of the private space data and/or the obtained contextual information. Person-centric data is then retrieved from the semi-private space at 608. Similarly, person-centric data is retrieved from the public space at 610. In this embodiment, the person-centric data is retrieved based on the cross-linking keys. At 612, all pieces of person-centric data retrieved from the private space, semi-private space, and public space are cross-linked together to generate a person-centric space. In this embodiment, the cross-linking is done based on the same cross-linking keys associated with these pieces of person-centric data. At 614, analytic data is derived from the person-centric space. For example, entities may be extracted from the person-centric space and are disambiguated by the knowledge engine 530 to ascertain their extract meanings Relationships between the entities may be inferred based on information from the person-centric space by the knowledge engine 530 as well. Based on the entities and relationships, person-centric knowledge can be derived and stored in the person-centric knowledge database 532.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for applying a person-centric space for digital personal assistance, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Starting at 702, an input from a person is received. As the person enters the input, a preliminary intent is estimated and continuously updated at 704. The estimation may be based on the current input and any contextual information currently available. At 706, one or more suggestions are generated based on the current input and the estimated intent and provided to the person to assist completing the current input. A response to the suggestions is received from the person at 708. The response may be a selection of one suggestion or ignoring the suggestions and finishing the input as the person desires. Once the completed input is received, either as a selection of a suggestion or a fully-entered input, at 710, the intent is estimated again for the completed input. The intent may be estimated based on the completed input and the currently available contextual information. In some embodiments, if no input is received (e.g., when the person just logs into and has not entered anything yet), the intent may be estimated based on the contextual information alone. At 712, person-centric knowledge is retrieved based on the input. In some embodiments, the estimated intent may be used for retrieving the person-centric knowledge as well. As described above in detail, the input may be a question, a task request, or a query. In any event, entities and/or relationships may be derived from the input and are used for retrieving relevant person-centric knowledge from the person-centric knowledge database 532. In some embodiments, additional information may be retrieved from the person-centric space. Intent-based cards are built at 714. Each card may be constructed based on a layout and one or more modules that are selected based on the type of the card and the estimated intent. Content in each module may be filled in based on the person-centric knowledge and any additional information retrieved at 712. Optionally or additionally, at 718, the construction of a card may cause a task to be generated based on the estimated intent. For instance, an email card summarizing an online order confirmation email may trigger the generation of a task for automatically tracking the package delivery status. At 720, the task is executed. Nevertheless, at 716, the intent-based cards, either an email card, an answer card, a search results card, or a notice card, are provided to the person as a response to the input.

FIG. 8 depicts an exemplary scheme of building a person-centric space for each individual person via the person-centric INDEX system and applications thereof, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. In this embodiment, each person 102-1, . . . 102-n may access its own person-centric INDEX system 202-1, . . . 202-n, respectively. The person-centric INDEX system 202 may be a stand-alone system installed on each person 102-1, . . . 102-n's device, a cloud-based system shared by different persons 102-1, . . . 102-n, or a hybrid system in which some components are installed on each person 102-1, . . . 102-n's device and some components are in the cloud and shared by different persons 102-1, . . . 102-n.

In this embodiment, individual person-centric spaces 200-1, . . . 200-n are generated for each person 102-1, . . . 102-n via its own person-centric INDEX system 202-1, . . . 202-n, respectively For example, person-centric space 1 200-1 includes the projections from different spaces related to person 1 102-1 from the perspectives of person 1 102-1 (e.g., the entire private space 1 104-1, parts of the semi-private spaces 1-k 106-1, . . . 106-k that are relevant to person 1 102-1, and a slice of the public space 108 that is relevant to person 1 102-1). Each person 102-1, . . . 102-n then uses its own person-centric INDEX system 202-1, . . . 202-n to access its own person-centric space 200-1, . . . 200-n, respectively. Based on inputs from a person to its person-centric INDEX system, outputs are returned based on information from the person-centric space in any forms and styles, including, for example, any conventional outputs such as search result pages with “blue links,” and any types of intent-based cards such as search results cards, answer cards, email cars, notice cards, and so on.

FIG. 9 depicts an exemplary scheme in which a variety of dynamic cards are built and provided to a person based on different intents estimated for the same query in different contexts, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Conventionally, a static card that has been pre-constructed for certain popular entities may be presented to a person when the query from the person happens to include one of those popular entities. In contrast, intent-based cards according to the present teaching can be dynamically generated on-the-fly by the person-centric INDEX system 202 responsive to a query 902 from the person 102. In this example, the person 102 inputs the same query 902 “super bowl” at different times. When the query 902 is entered three weeks before the super bowl game, its temporal context 904 will likely cause the intent 906 to be estimated as “buying super bowl tickets.” Based on such intent, a card 908 is dynamically generated for buying super bowl tickets, including information such as super bowl ticket prices, tips on how to purchase, purchase website, etc. In some embodiments, the generation of this card 908 would cause a task of purchasing super bowl tickets to be automatically generated and completed. As time passes, when the temporal context 910 changes to the super bowl night, when the person 102 enters the same query 902, the intent 912 will likely change to “watching super bowl game.” Accordingly, a different card 914 for online super bowl game streaming is built and presented to the person 102, which may include, for example, websites currently streaming the game. When the game finishes and the temporal context 916 changes to the day after the super bowl game, if the person 102 again enters the query 902, the intent 918 will likely become “reading super bowl game reviews.” A card 920 of super bowl game reviews is constructed and presented to the person 102. It is understood that the examples described above are for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 10 illustrates an exemplary answer card, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. The answer card 1000 in this example is dynamically constructed on-the-fly in response to the question “when is my son's soccer game?” Based on the type of the card (answer card) and intent (finding out my son's soccer game date/time), the layout and modules are determined as shown in FIG. 10. It is understood that the shape, size, and layout of the answer card 1000 is for illustrative purpose only and may vary in other examples. In some embodiments, the shape, size, and layout may be dynamically adjusted to fit the specification of the user device (e.g., screen size, display resolution, etc.).

In this example, the answer card includes an answer header module 1002 indicating that the topic of the answer card 1000 is “Daniel's (my son's name identified according to person-centric knowledge) Next Soccer Game.” The direct answer to the question is found from a private email and provided in the date/time module 1004. Optionally, certain actions related to the answer may be provided as well, such as “add to my calendar” and “open related emails.” Other information related to the direct answer is provided in other modules as well. The location module 1006 provides the location, address, and map of the soccer game. Information such as location and address may be retrieved from the email related to the game in the private database 548 of the person-centric space 200, while the map may be retrieved from Google Maps in the public space 108. The weather module 1008 provides the weather forecast of the game day, which may be retrieved from wwww.Weather.com in the public space 108. The contact module 1010 shows persons involved in the game and their contact information retrieved from the email about the game and private Contacts in the private database 548 of the person-centric space 200. Optionally, action buttons may be provided to call the persons directly from the answer card 1000. It is understood that the example described above is for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 11 illustrates an exemplary search result card, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. The search results card 1100 in this example is dynamically constructed on-the-fly in response to the query “amy adams.” Based on the type of the card (a search results card) and intent (learning more about actor Amy Adams), the layout and modules are determined as shown in FIG. 11. It is understood that the shape, size, and layout of the search results card 1100 is for illustrative purpose only and may vary in other examples. In some embodiments, the shape, size, and layout may be dynamically adjusted to fit the specification of the user device (e.g., screen size, display resolution, etc.). In this example, the search results card 1100 includes a header module 1102 with the name, occupation, and portrait of Amy Adams. The bio module 1104 includes her bio retrieved from Wikipedia, and the movies module 1106 includes her recent movies. In the movies module 1106, each movie may be presented in a “mini card” with the movie's name, release year, poster, and brief instruction, which are retrieved from www.IMDB.com. The movies module 1106 is actionable so that a person can swap the “mini cards” to see information of more her movies. If more modules cannot be shown simultaneously due to the size of the search results card 1100 (for example when it is shown on a smart phone screen), tabs (e.g., “Latest,” “About”) may be used to display different modules. It is understood that the example described above is for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 12 depicts an exemplary scheme of automatic online order email summary and package tracking via cross-linked data in a person-centric space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Various aspects of the present teaching are illustrated in FIG. 12 as well as related FIGS. 13-15, including cross-linking data from different spaces, entity extraction and building person-centric knowledge representation, dynamic card productions based on intent, answering personal questions, and automatic task generation and completion. In this example, at time t0, an order confirmation email 1202 is received from www.Amazon.com. The email 1202 in the private space is processed to extract and identify entities. The entities include, for example, seller/vendor—www.Amazon.com, recipient/person—Mike, order date—Dec. 25, 2015, item—Contract Case book, shipping carrier—FedEx, tracking number—12345678, and estimated delivery date: Jan. 1, 2016. In response to receiving the email 1202, an email card 1204 summarizing the email 1202 is generated and may be provided to Mike automatically or upon his request.

The generation of the email card 1204 in this example automatically initiates the generation of task 1 1206 for checking package delivery status. The details of task 1 1206 will be described in FIG. 13. In order to check the package delivery status, one or more cross-linking keys in the package shipping domain are identified among the entities extracted from the email 1202. As shown in FIG. 13, the entity “shipping carrier—FedEx” is a cross-linking key used for identifying the website of FedEx 1208 in the public space, and the entity “tracking number—12345678” is a cross-linking key used for calling the status check API 1210 of FedEx 1208. Based on the tracking number, package delivery status information 1212 is retrieved from FedEx 1208. Different pieces of information from the private space and public space are thus cross-linked based on the cross-linking keys and can be projected into the person-centric space.

At time t1, in response to an input from Mike (e.g., a question “where is my amazon order?”), an answer card 1214 is dynamically generated based on private information in the email card 1204 and the public package delivery status information 1212. The answer card 1214 is presented to Mike as an answer to his question. In this example, the generation of the answer card 1214 automatically initiates another task 2 1216 for monitoring and reporting package delivery status update. According to task 2 1216, package delivery status information 1212 may be regularly refreshed and updated according to a schedule (e.g., every two hours) or may be dynamically refreshed and updated upon detecting any event that affects the package delivery. In this example, at times t2 and tn, certain events, such as package being delayed due to severe weather or package being delivered, trigger the generation of notice cards 1218, 1220, respectively. It is understood that the example described above is for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 13 illustrates an exemplary task with a list of task actions for automatic package tracking Task 1 1206 for tracking package delivery status in this example includes a series of task actions (task action list): identifying shipping carrier 1302, identifying tracking number 1304, obtaining shipping carrier's URL 1306, calling shopping carrier's status check API using the tracking number 1308, extracting status information 1310, and filling in the card 1312. Each task action may be associated with parameters such as conditions in which the task action is to be executed. For example, for task action 1312 “filling in the card,” the condition may be filling the current package delivery status into an answer card when a question about the package delivery status is asked by the person or filling the current package delivery status into a notice card of package delivery status update without waiting for any input from the person. Some task actions (e.g., 1302, 1304) may be executed by retrieving relevant information from the person-centric space 200 and/or the person-centric knowledge database 532, while some task actions (e.g., 1308) need to be completed in the public space 108. It is understood that the example described above is for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 14 illustrates a series of exemplary cards provided to a person in the process of automatic online order email summary and package tracking In this example, the email card 1204 is automatically generated responsive to receiving the amazon order confirmation email 1202 and summarizes the email 1202 based on the entities extracted from the email 1202 and relationships thereof. The email card 1204 includes a header module “My Amazon Oder” and an order module with entities of item and price. A “buy it again” action button may be added in the order module. The email card 1204 also includes a shipping module with entities of shipping carrier, tracking number, and scheduled delivery date.

In this example, the answer card 1214 is generated in response to a question from the person about the status of the package. The answer card 1214 includes the header module and order module (but with less information as the order information is not a direct answer to the question). The answer card 1214 includes a shipping module with rich information related to shipping, which is retrieved from both the private email 1202 and FedEx 1208. The information includes, for example, entities of shipping carrier, tracking number, and scheduled delivery date from the private email 1202, and current estimated delivery date, status, and location from FedEx 1208.

In this example, multiple notice cards 1218, 1220 are automatically generated in response to any event that affects the status of the package. Each notice card 1218, 1220 includes an additional notification module. If any other information is affected or updated due to the event, it may be highlighted as well to bring to the person's attention. In notice card 1 1218, shipment is delayed due to a winter storm in ABC town and as a consequence, the current estimated delivery date is changed according to information retrieved from FedEx 1208. According to notice card N 1220, the package has been delivered to Mike's home. It is understood that the examples described above are for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

FIG. 15 illustrates exemplary entities extracted from a person-centric space and their relationships established in the process of automatic online order email summary and package tracking. As described above, the person-centric knowledge database 532 stores person-centric knowledge organized in the form of entity-relationship-entity triples. Entities extracted from the amazon order confirmation email 1202 are formed into entity-relationship-entity triples by the knowledge engine 530. In the example of FIG. 15, entity “Mike” 1502 from the recipient field of the email 1202 is determined as the person using the person-centric INDEX system 202, and entity “FedEx” 1504 is determined as a shipping carrier with a short-term relationship 1506 with entity “Mike” 1502. Attributes 1508 may be associated with the relationship 1506 including, for example, temporal attribute, tracking number, shipping item, sender, etc. These attributes may include related entities extracted from the email 1202 and any other attributes inferred based on the relationship 1506. It is noted that the relationship 1506 between entity “Mike” 1502 and entity “FedEx” 1504 is a short-term, temporary relationship in the sense that the relationship 1506 will become invalid after the shipment is completed, as indicated by the temporal attribute. In this example, entity “Mike” 1502 and another entity “Amazon” 1510 establish a long-term relationship 1512 with a different set of attributes 1514 thereof. The attributes 1514 include, for example, the temporal attribute, item, item rating, and so on. The relationship 1512 is long-term in this example because Mike has been repeatedly ordered goods from Amazon, which has become his behavior pattern or preference. It is understood that the examples described above are for illustrative purpose and are not intended to be limiting.

More detailed disclosures of various aspects of the person-centric INDEX system 202 are covered in different U.S. patent applications, entitled “Method and system for associating data from different sources to generate a person-centric space,” “Method and system for searching in a person-centric space,” “Methods, systems and techniques for providing search query suggestions based on non-personal data and user personal data according to availability of user personal data,” “Methods, systems and techniques for personalized search query suggestions,” “Methods, systems and techniques for ranking personalized and generic search query suggestions,” “Method and system for entity extraction and disambiguation,” “Method and system for generating a knowledge representation,” “Method and system for generating a card based on intent,” “Method and system for dynamically generating a card,” “Method and system for updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space,” “Method and system for classifying a question,” “Method and system for providing synthetic answers to a personal question,” “Method and system for automatically generating and completing a task,” “Method and system for online task exchange,” “Methods, systems and techniques for blending online content from multiple disparate content sources including a personal content source or a semi-personal content source,” and “Methods, systems and techniques for ranking blended content retrieved from multiple disparate content sources.” The present teaching is particularly directed to updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space.

FIG. 16 illustrates an exemplary intent space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. The intent space 1600 in this embodiment has two dimensions: actions and domains of knowledge (domains). Each data point in the intent space 1600 represent an intent that characterized in each of the two dimensions. Each intent may include a feature in the action dimension and a feature in the domain dimension. For example, an intent “making hotel reservations” include a feature “making reservations” in the action dimension and a feature “hotel” in the domain dimension, while another intent “making restaurant reservations” include the same feature “making reservations” in the action dimension but a different feature “restaurant” in the domain dimension; still another intent “canceling hotel reservations” include a different feature “canceling reservation” in the action dimension but the same feature “hotel” in the domain dimension. As shown in FIG. 16, the intent space 1600 is defined by the action dimension with features 1-N and the domain dimension with features 1-K. In this embodiment, each data point (intersection) in the intent space represents an intent defined by the corresponding features in the action and domain dimensions. For example, the intent 1602 is defined by action feature X 1606 and domain feature Y 1604.

In this embodiment, not all data points (intersections) in the intent space 1600 are positively labeled. When the number of features in each dimension expands, the possible combinations (i.e., data points in the intent space 1600) will become huge, which makes traversing the entire or event part of the intent space 1600 (e.g., all action features in the same domain column or all domain features in the same action row) to become time consuming. On the other hands, a lot of possible combinations (i.e., data points in the intent space 1600) are rarely used either by a person for whom a personal intent space is built or even by the general population. And some combinations do not make sense, such as “making reservations” and “newspaper.” Thus, in this embodiment, the initial intents of the intent space 1600 may be determined by user data. For example, the initial features of each dimension in the intent space 1600 may be manually determined by editorial selection and/or derived from actual inputs from a specific person or the general population. The inputs may be, for example, search queries, questions, task requests, etc. Some inputs may only have features in one dimension. For example, a query “movie ticket” only has features in the domain dimension but not in the action dimension. Similar to the features of each dimension, the initial intents in the intent space 1600 may be manually determined by editorial selection and/or derived from actual inputs from a specific person or the general population. For intents from the actual user inputs, they can be either explicitly recited (e.g., “making hotel reservation”) or estimated, for example, based on contextual information. In some embodiments, one or more criteria may be set to determine whether an intent can be included in the intent space 1600 even it was from the actual user inputs. For instance, an intent may need to repeatedly appear over a certain number of times in order to be considered as a meaningful intent that can be added into the intent space 1600.

On one hand, it may be undesirable to include all possible combinations in the intent space 1600 as candidates for intent estimation; on the other hand, the intent space 1600 needs to be kept updating to have more meaningful intents that can be used for intent estimation, which would help improve the availability and accuracy of intent estimation. Adding new features of a dimension and new intents to the current intent space 1600 may be done in various ways, for example, by deriving intents from actual user inputs as described above. In this embodiment, some experts, who are selected from general populations or users of the person-centric INDEX system 202, may manually add new features in any of the dimensions and/or new intents based on existing features of the dimensions. For example, an academic expert may find that current intent space 1600 does not have the intent “reviewing academic conference papers” either because the feature “reviewing papers” in the action domain and/or the feature “academic conference” does not exist in the intent space 1600 or the combination has not been positively labeled even though both features do exist. The academic expert then may add the intent “reviewing academic conference papers” to the intent space 1600. If either feature related to the intent does not exist before, then the intent space 1600 will also be updated to include the missing feature(s) as the academic expert adds the new intent. In some embodiments, some experts may have the privilege to update a common intent space, which may be applied to the general population or a group of people. In some embodiments, each person using the person-centric INDEX system 202 may act as an “expert” to update her/his own personal intent space.

In this embodiment, another way to update the current intent space 1600 is learning new intents from initial intents based on models. As will be described below in detail, a model may be provided to each dimension for discovering new features in the dimension. The model may include features in a dimension and relationships thereof. The relationship may be represented in various forms, such as taxonomy or a graph. The closeness (distance) between different features may be obtained from the model. In the example of FIG. 16, the initial intent 1602 is the combination of feature Y 1604 in the domain dimension and feature X 1606 in the action dimension. A model in the action dimension may indicate that feature X′ 1608 is close to feature X 1606 and thus, a new combination of feature Y 1604 in the domain dimension and feature X′ 1608 in the action dimension is likely a meaningful intent even though it may not be positively labeled as an initial intent. Accordingly, a new intent 1610 may be discovered and added to the intent space 1600. Similarly, another model in the domain dimension may indicate that feature Y′ 1612 is close to feature Y 1604 and thus, a new combination of feature X 1606 in the action dimension and feature Y′ 1612 in the domain dimension is likely a meaningful intent even though it may not be positively labeled as an initial intent. Accordingly, a new intent 1614 may be discovered and added to the intent space 1600. The intent space 1600 is thus updated to include the new intents 1610 and 1614 that are discovered based on the initial intent 1602 and the models.

In this embodiment, each intent in the intent space 1600 is associated with a set of attributes. The attributes may include species information, personal information, historical information, temporal attributes, locale attributes, etc. The species information may indicate the more fine-grained feature of the intent in a dimension. For example, for an intent “purchasing wines,” it may have species information indicating whether the feature wine in the domain dimension has a more fine-grained feature, such as red wines, white wines, etc., or even more fine-grained features, such as zinfandel, pinot noir, chardonnay, merlot, etc. The personal information may be any information related to the person for whom the intent is estimated and/or the one or more persons from whom the intent was derived. The historical information may be the inputs from which the intent was derived and the frequency the intent appears. The temporal attributes and locale attributes may be the date/time and geo-location in which the intent was added to the intent space 1600 or in which the intent has been chosen as the estimated intent. It is understood that any other suitable attributes may be associated with an intent in the intent space 1600. The attributes may be used for selecting one intent from possible intent candidates when estimating an intent for an input by checking the contextual information related to the input against the attributes to find the relevancies. The attributes of an estimated intent may also be used by other components of the person-centric INDEX system 202 when the estimated intent is provided for various applications as disclosed in the present teaching.

The intent space 1600 may be used for estimating an intent for any user input. When an input from a person is received, either in the form of a query, a question, or a task request, the input may be parsed, and features of domain and/or action may be derived from the parsed input. For example, domain features may be derived from entities extracted from the input, and action features may be derived from verbs in the input. If both features from the domain and action dimension can be derived from the input, then their combination may explicitly indicate the intent, such as “making hotel reservations.” In some embodiments, the combination may be checked against the intent space 1600 to see if it is positively labeled in the intent space 1600. If not, it is possible that the intent is not meaningful due to typos in the input or because the intent space 1600 just has not capture the intent yet. For the latter case, the intent space 1600 may be updated to populate this intent. Similarly, if any feature from the input does not appear in the intent space 1600, the intent space 1600 may be updated to expand the corresponding dimension to include such feature.

In the case that only features from the domain dimension or action dimension can be obtained from the input, all the intents populated in the intent space 1600 that correspond to such feature may be first returned as candidates. Assuming that the input is “making reservations,” only action feature X 1606 “making reservation” can be obtained. According to the intent space 1600 shown in FIG. 1, two possible intents 1602 and 1614 are related to action feature X 1606 “making reservation”. For example, if the domain feature Y 1604 and domain feature Y′ 1612 are “hotel” and “restaurant,” respectively, then the two possible intents 1602 and 1614 are “making hotel reservations” and “making restaurant reservations,” respectively. In order to estimate the most likely intent for the input “making reservations,” any contextual information available for the person and/or the input may be used. For instance, if the person is currently in a hotel based on the locale information, then it is more likely she/her intents to make restaurant reservations rather than hotel reservations because the person is already in the hotel. In the case that there is only one intent populated in the intent space 1600 based on the features derived from the input, the intent is returned as the estimated intent.

FIG. 17 depicts an exemplary scheme of combing personal intent spaces into a common intent space, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. In this embodiment, each person may have her/his own personal intent space 1 created and updated based on user data of the person and/or manually by the person. Personal intent spaces 1700-1, 1700-2, . . . , 1700-m may be combined to generate a common intent space 1702 for all those persons 1-M. In some embodiments, the common intent space 1702 may not be generated from the personal intent spaces 1700-1, 1700-2, . . . , 1700-m, but instead created and updated based on user data from the general populations and/or manually by experts as described above. A person-centric INDEX system 202 for a person may use the personal intent space 1700, the common intent space 1702, or both for estimating intent. In one example, the personal intent space 1700 may be created and maintained on the person's local device, and the common intent space 1702 may be created and maintained on a remote server for all users. In another example, both the personal intent space 1700 and common intent space 1702 may be created and maintained on a remote server. In the case that there is not enough user data of a person to create the initial personal intent space 1700, for example, because the person just starts to use the person-centric INDEX 202, the common intent space 1702 may be used as the initial personal intent space 1700. Over the time, as more user data can be obtained from the person, the common intent space 1702 may be updated to become a personal intent space 1700 that is customized for the person.

FIG. 18 depicts an exemplary system diagram of an intent engine 524 including an intent estimator 1802 and an intent database builder 1804, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. The intent estimator 1802 in this embodiment is configured to estimate an intent for an input from a person using the person-centric INDEX system 202 based on an intent space in the intent database 534. The intent database builder 1804 in this embodiment is configured to create and update one or more intent spaces in the intent database 534.

The intent estimator 1802 in this embodiment includes an input parser 1806, a semantic analyzer 1808, mapping units 1810, intent filter 1812, and an intent candidate fetcher 1814. The input parser 1806 receives any input from a person via the user interface 502, such as queries, questions, or task requests. Text of each input is then parsed into units by the input parser 1806. The semantic analyzer 1808 may analyze the parsed input text to extract entities and verbs (and associated phrases). For example, for an input “make hotel reservations,” the entities may include “hotel” and the verbs include “make” (and associated phrase “make reservation”). The mapping units 1810 in this embodiment includes an action mapping unit 1810-1 for mapping verbs and associated phrases into features in the action dimension of an intent space and a domain mapping unit 1810-2 for mapping entities into features in the domain dimension of the intent space. It is understood that a variety of verbs or phrases may be mapped to the same action feature in an intent space. For example, “make reservations,” and “book,” “making reservations” can all be mapped to the same action feature in an intent space. Similarly, different entities may be mapped to the same domain feature in an intent space depending on the granularity of the domains in the intent space. For instance, “zinfandel,” “pinot noir,” “chardonnay,” and “merlot” may all be mapped to the same domain feature “wine.” A mapping model 1816 is used by the mapping units 1810 for mapping, which can be manually built based on common knowledge and the configuration of the intent space and/or machined learned using training data.

The intent candidate fetcher 1814 receives the mapped features from the mapping units 1810. It is understood that sometimes, only action features or domain features, but not both, can be obtained from an input. The intent candidate fetcher 1814 in some embodiments may also retrieve person-centric knowledge via the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 based on the entities and/or verbs from the semantic analyzer 1808. In some cases, the person-centric knowledge may be helpful for the intent candidate fetcher 1814 to determine intent candidates or even find the single intent directly. As described above, the intent candidate fetcher 1814 fetches all possible intents populated in the intent space stored in the intent database 534 based on the available features. If features from both domain and action dimensions are available, the intent candidate fetcher 1814 may return the combination directly as the estimated intent. If such combination is not populated as an intent in the intent space, the intent candidate fetcher 1814 may determine whether such combination shall be added to the intent space or ignored. The determination may be made based on common knowledge (e.g., certain combinations of domain and action features do not make sense), person-centric knowledge (e.g., certain combinations of domain and action features are in conflict with person-centric knowledge), and so on. If more than one intent is returned based on the action feature or domain feature, then the intent candidate fetcher 1814 forward them as intent candidates to the intent filter.

In case there is more than one intent fetched from the intent database 534 by the intent candidate fetcher 1814, the intent filter 1812 is responsible for filtering the intent candidates based on contextual information related to the person and/or the input provided by the contextual information identifier 512. The contextual information may include user-related information such as the person's demographic information and declared and inferred interests and preferences, date/time when the input is made, location where the input is sent, information related to the person's device itself (e.g., the device type, brand, and specification), and user-session information such as one or more inputs immediately before the current input. In one example, if the intent candidates include “buying flowers” and “buying video games” and the date is one day before Mother's Day, then “buying flowers” is more likely to be the intent of the person. In another example, for the same intent candidates, if it is found that the person has searched several newly released video games before the current input, then “buying video games” is more likely to be the intent of the person. In addition to contextual information, person-centric knowledge retrieved by the person-centric knowledge retriever 526 may also be used by the intent filter 1812 to select one of the intent candidates. If the intent candidates include “buying flowers” and “buying video games” and the person send several emails to her/his mother about dinner on Mother's Day, then buying flowers” is more likely to be the intent of the person.

The intent database builder 1804 in this embodiment includes an inputs cluster 1818, identifiers 1822, an attribute recorder 1824, expanding units 1826, an intent database updater 1830, and an expert teaching unit 1832. The inputs cluster 1818 in this embodiment groups inputs from the person that have the same intent using a clustering model 1820. The inputs cluster 1818 may cluster the queries, words and phrases leading to the same intent. During clustering, the inputs cluster may detect and categorize all entities in the input when present using, for example, a conditional random field (CRF)++ sequence tagger, which identifies a number of entity types. The detected entities and their types may be used as features individually as well as in combination with the remaining n-grams in the input. These features can be used by the inputs cluster 1818 for generalizing huge vocabulary and variants of entity names. In addition, the inputs cluster 1818 may use word embeddings trained on large set of unlabeled inputs, which allow the inputs cluster 1818 to find similar words such as “car,” “vehicle,” “automobile,” and “BMW.” In one example, the inputs cluster 1818 may learn latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic models from documents to discover words that belong to different topic and later use this information for each word to express which topic it belongs to. The output from the inputs cluster 1818 may be sets of groupings leading to the same intent and meaning. For example, the inputs “I want to make a reservation to Wynn,” “cheap hotel reservation,” “book Wynn” may be part of the same cluster.

The identifiers 1822 in this embodiment includes an action identifier 1822-1 and a domain identifier 1822-2 configured to identify features in the action and domain dimensions, respectively, for each cluster of inputs. The action identifier 1822-1 may extract the most common verbs or associated phrases from the cluster as the action feature. Words or phrases with the same or similar meanings may be consolidated. The domain identifier 1822-2 may take the most popular entities in the cluster as the domain feature. In addition to usage frequency, recency or any other factors may be taken into consideration by the identifiers 1822 in identifying the action and domain features. The attribute recorder 1824 in this embodiment may collect any attributes as mentioned above with respect to FIG. 16 from each cluster and associate them with the corresponding intent so that they can be stored with each data point in the intent space. Contextual information from the contextual information identifier 512 may be supplied to the attribute recorder 1824 for collecting and recoding certain attributes, such as temporal and locale attributes.

The expanding units 1826 in this embodiment include an action expanding unit 1826-1 and a domain expanding unit 1826-2 configured to discover new intents based on expanding features in the action dimension and domain dimension, respectively. As mentioned above, expanding models 1828 may be applied in each dimension for determining new features of each domain. Turning now to FIG. 23, it shows one example of expanding models 1828 in the domain dimension. In this example, the expanding model 1828 is a domain taxonomy that includes a plurality of domain of knowledge and their relationships. The domain taxonomy may be manually defined based on common knowledge and/or machined learned from user training data. In this example, the domain taxonomy includes first level domain features, such as travel, auto, sports, business, and so on. In the travel domain feature, the second level domain features include, for example, hotel, restaurant, flight, car rental, etc. Based on the closeness (distance) between domain features in the domain taxonomy, a new intent may be determined based on an existing intent. For example, if one cluster of inputs have an intent of “making hotel reservations,” the domain feature of that intent is identified as “hotel” in the domain taxonomy. In accordance with the domain taxonomy, additional domain features such as “restaurant,” “flight,” and “car rental” are deemed to be close to the “hotel” domain feature. The domain expanding unit 1826-2 thus may add new intents “making restaurant reservations,” “making flight reservations,” and “making car rental reservations” based on the identified additional domain features.

As to features in the action dimension, another expanding model 1828 may be applied to determine new features and thus add new intents. Turning now to FIG. 24, it shows one example of expanding models 1828 in the action dimension. In this example, the expanding model 1828 is an action graph that includes a plurality of actions and their relationships. The action graph may be manually defined based on common knowledge and/or machined learned from user training data. In this example, the action feature of “make reservation” is related to other actions features including “make payment,” “find location,” “check status,” “cancel reservation,” etc. Based on the closeness (distance) between action features in the action graph, a new intent may be determined based on an existing intent. For example, if one cluster of inputs have an intent of “making hotel reservations,” the action feature of that intent is identified as “make reservation” in the action graph. In accordance with the action graph, additional action features such as “make payment,” “find location,” “check status,” and “cancel reservation” are deemed to be close to the “make reservation” action feature. The action expanding unit 1826-1 thus may add new intents “cancel hotel reservations,” “check hotel reservation status,” “make payment for hotel reservations,” and “find hotel reservations location” based on the identified additional domain features.

Returning back to FIG. 18, additional expanding models 1828 may be applied in some embodiments. In the “Wynn reservation” example described above, the phrase “make a reservation at Wynn” may be generalized after clustering to “make a reservation at <hotel>”. When the domain feature is removed, another expanding model 1828 may find other similar phrases that have different domain feature at the same position, for instance “make a reservation at Cascal,” where “Cascal” is a restaurant. Now the intent databased builder 1804 learns automatically that “make reservations” is an action feature that can be attached also to <restaurants>.

The intent database updater 1830 in this embodiment continuously receives inputs from the identifiers 1822 and the expanding units 1826 to create and update the intent space in the intent database 534. The inputs to the intent databased updater 1830 may be domain features, action features, and/or intents derived from inputs of the person (e.g., as attached to each input cluster). The inputs to the intent databased updater 1830 may be newly discovered domain features, action features, and/or intents expanded from the known intents based on expanding models 1828. The attributes for each intent collected by the attribute recorded 1824 may also be updated by the intent database updater 1830 in conjunction with the attribute recorder 1824.

The expert teaching unit 1832 in this embodiment may update the intent space in the intent database 534 by expert teaching. FIG. 25 depicts an exemplary scheme of teaching new intent by experts, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. A group of experts 2502 may be selected from all users 2504 of the person-centric INDEX system 202. The experts 2502 may be selected based on various criteria, such as their expertise in certain areas, their knowledge about the person-centric INDEX system 202, and their social influence and reputations, to name a few. Additional user interface element may be provided to the experts 2502 via the user interface of the person-centric INDEX system 202 or a means independent of the person-centric INDEX system 202 so that the experts 2502 can interact with the expert teaching unit 1832 to add new domain features, add new action features, and/or add new intents to the common intent space 1702. In some embodiments, an expert may be granted prevailed to add new domain features, new action features, and/or new intent in certain areas according to her/his expertise. An administrative review may be applied to review and approve any new domain features, new action features, and/or new intent before they can be populated into the common intent space 1700. It is understood that, in some embodiments, the experts 2502 may update the common intent space 1702 by removing certain domain features, action features, and/or intents that are deemed to be inappropriate or nonsense. In this embodiment, the update of the common intent space 1702 may affect each person's personal intent space 1700. For example, some or all of the new domain features, new action features, and/or new intent in the common intent space 1702 may be added to a person's personal intent space 1700.

The system components described above are for illustrative purposes; however, the present teaching is not intended to be limiting and may comprise and/or cooperate with other elements to update an intent space and estimate intent based on an intent space. It is understood that although the present teaching related to updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space is described herein in detail as part of the person-centric INDEX system 202, in some embodiments, the system and method disclosed in the present teaching for updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space can be independent from the person-centric INDEX system 202 or as a part of another system.

FIG. 19 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for an intent estimator, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Starting at 1902, an input from a person is received. The input may be in the form of a query, a question, or a task request. The text of the input includes paragraphs, sentences, phrases, words, letters, numbers, and symbols. The input is parsed at 1904. The text of input may be parsed into units. At 1906, the parsed input is analyzed to determine features in the dimensions of an intent space. The features include action features and domain features. For instance, entities extracted from the input text may be mapped to domain features, and verbs and associated phrases may be mapped to action features. Intent candidate(s) are fetched from the intent space based on determined features at 1908. At 1910, whether there is more than one intent candidate is checked. If only one intent is fetched, moving to 1914, the intent is returned as the estimated intent. Otherwise, at 1912, the intent candidates are filtered based on contextual information. Optionally or additionally, the intent candidates may be filtered based on person-centric knowledge of the person. The remaining intent candidate is returned at 1914 as the estimated intent.

FIG. 20 is a flowchart of another exemplary process for an intent estimator, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Starting at 2002, an input from a person is received. The input is parsed into units at 2004. At 2006, it is determined whether any unit can be mapped to an action feature or a domain feature. If it is determined that only an action feature is mapped from a unit (e.g., a verb) of the input, the process continues to 2008 where all intents with the action feature are fetched from the intent space. At 2012, the fetched intents are filtered based on contextual information. In some embodiments, the filtering at 2012 may be based on any person-centric knowledge of the person as well. At 2014, the intent is retuned as the estimated intent of the input. At 2006, if only a domain feature is mapped from a unit (e.g., an entity) of the input, the process continues to 2010 where all intents with the domain feature are fetched from the intent space. At 2012, the fetched intents are filtered based on contextual information. In some embodiments, the filtering at 2012 may be based on any person-centric knowledge of the person as well. At 2014, the intent is returned as the estimated intent of the input. If, at 2006, both an action feature and a domain feature are mapped from units of the input, then moving to 2016, where an intent as the combination of the action feature and domain feature is fetched from the intent space. That is, if the number of features determined from the input equals the number of dimensions in the intent space (two features in two dimensions in this example), then the combination of the features is the estimated intent.

FIG. 21 is a flowchart of an exemplary process for an intent database builder, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Starting at 2102, input data is received. The input data is clustered into multiple clusters at 2104. At 2106, an intent is identified for each cluster. At 2108, the initial intent space is built based on all intents of the clusters. If the input data is specific to a person, the intent space may be a personal intent space for the person. If the input data is received from a general population, then the intent space may be a common intent space for the general population. At 2110, new intents are discovered based on the existing intents. The intent space is updated at 2112 to incorporate the new intents.

FIG. 22 is a flowchart of another exemplary process for an intent database builder, according to an embodiment of the present teaching. Starting at 2202, entities are extracted from each piece of input data. At 2204, the extracted entities are categorized. Topics of words are determined in the input data at 2206. The input data is clustered based on the categorized entities and the topics of words at 2208. At 2210, the most common verbs among all inputs in each cluster are extracted as the action features. At 2212, the most popular entities among all inputs in each cluster are extracted as the domain features. Intents are determined based on the action features and domain features for each cluster at 2214. At 2216, additional action features are identified based on an action graph. At 2218, additional domain features are identified based on a domain taxonomy.

FIG. 26 depicts the architecture of a mobile device which can be used to realize a specialized system implementing the present teaching. In this example, the device on which a person interfaces and interacts with the person-centric INDEX system 202 is a mobile device 2600, including, but is not limited to, a smart phone, a tablet, a music player, a hand-held gaming console, a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, and a wearable computing device (e.g., eyeglasses, wrist watch, etc.), or in any other forms. The mobile device 2600 in this example includes one or more central processing units (CPUs) 2602, one or more graphic processing units (GPUs) 2604, a display 2606, a memory 2608, a communication platform 2610, such as a wireless communication module, storage 2612, and one or more input/output (I/O) devices 2614. Any other suitable component, including but not limited to a system bus or a controller (not shown), may also be included in the mobile device 2600. As shown in FIG. 26, a mobile operating system 2616 (e.g., iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc.), and one or more applications 2618 may be loaded into the memory 2608 from the storage 2612 in order to be executed by the CPU 2602. The applications 2618 may include the entire or a portion of the person-centric INDEX 202. User interactions with the user interface 502 of the person-centric INDEX 202 may be achieved via the I/O devices 2614 and provided to any component of the person-centric INDEX 202 on one or more remote servers via the communication platform 2610.

To implement various modules, units, and their functionalities described in the present disclosure, computer hardware platforms may be used as the hardware platform(s) for one or more of the elements described herein (e.g., the person-centric INDEX system 202 described with respect to FIGS. 2-25). The hardware elements, operating systems and programming languages of such computers are conventional in nature, and it is presumed that those skilled in the art are adequately familiar therewith to adapt those technologies to updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space as described herein. A computer with user interface elements may be used to implement a personal computer (PC) or other type of work station or terminal device, although a computer may also act as a server if appropriately programmed. It is believed that those skilled in the art are familiar with the structure, programming and general operation of such computer equipment, and as a result the drawings should be self-explanatory.

FIG. 27 depicts the architecture of a computing device which can be used to realize a specialized system implementing the present teaching. Such a specialized system incorporating the present teaching has a functional block diagram illustration of a hardware platform which includes user interface elements. The computer may be a general purpose computer or a special purpose computer. Both can be used to implement a specialized system for the present teaching. This computer 2700 may be used to implement any component of the person-centric INDEX system 202, as described herein. For example, the person-centric INDEX system 202 may be implemented on a computer such as computer 2700, via its hardware, software program, firmware, or a combination thereof. Although only one such computer is shown for convenience, the computer functions relating to updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space as described herein may be implemented in a distributed fashion on a number of similar platforms, to distribute the processing load.

The computer 2700, for example, includes COM ports 2702 connected to and from a network connected thereto to facilitate data communications. The computer 2700 also includes a central processing unit (CPU) 2704, in the form of one or more processors, for executing program instructions. The exemplary computer platform includes an internal communication bus 2706, program storage and data storage of different forms (e.g., disk 2708, read only memory (ROM) 2710, or random access memory (RAM) 2712), for various data files to be processed and/or communicated by the computer, as well as possibly program instructions to be executed by the CPU 2704. The computer 2700 also includes an I/O component 2714, supporting input/output flows between the computer and other components therein such as user interface elements 2716. The computer 2700 may also receive programming and data via network communications.

Hence, aspects of the methods of updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space and/or other processes, as outlined above, may be embodied in programming. Program aspects of the technology may be thought of as “products” or “articles of manufacture” typically in the form of executable code and/or associated data that is carried on or embodied in a type of machine readable medium. Tangible non-transitory “storage” type media include any or all of the memory or other storage for the computers, processors or the like, or associated modules thereof, such as various semiconductor memories, tape drives, disk drives and the like, which may provide storage at any time for the software programming.

All or portions of the software may at times be communicated through a network such as the Internet or various other telecommunication networks. Such communications, for example, may enable loading of the software from one computer or processor into another, for example, from a server or host computer into the hardware platform(s) of a computing environment or other system implementing a computing environment or similar functionalities in connection with updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space. Thus, another type of media that may bear the software elements includes optical, electrical and electromagnetic waves, such as used across physical interfaces between local devices, through wired and optical landline networks and over various air-links. The physical elements that carry such waves, such as wired or wireless links, optical links or the like, also may be considered as media bearing the software. As used herein, unless restricted to tangible “storage” media, terms such as computer or machine “readable medium” refer to any medium that participates in providing instructions to a processor for execution.

Hence, a machine-readable medium may take many forms, including but not limited to, a tangible storage medium, a carrier wave medium or physical transmission medium. Non-volatile storage media include, for example, optical or magnetic disks, such as any of the storage devices in any computer(s) or the like, which may be used to implement the system or any of its components as shown in the drawings. Volatile storage media include dynamic memory, such as a main memory of such a computer platform. Tangible transmission media include coaxial cables, copper wire and fiber optics, including the wires that form a bus within a computer system. Carrier-wave transmission media may take the form of electric or electromagnetic signals, or acoustic or light waves such as those generated during radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR) data communications. Common forms of computer-readable media therefore include, for example: a floppy disk, a flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, any other magnetic medium, a CD-ROM, DVD or DVD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards paper tape, any other physical storage medium with patterns of holes, a RAM, a PROM and EPROM, a FLASH-EPROM, any other memory chip or cartridge, a carrier wave transporting data or instructions, cables or links transporting such a carrier wave, or any other medium from which a computer may read programming code and/or data. Many of these forms of computer readable media may be involved in carrying one or more sequences of one or more instructions to a physical processor for execution.

Those skilled in the art will recognize that the present teachings are amenable to a variety of modifications and/or enhancements. For example, although the implementation of various components described above may be embodied in a hardware device, it may also be implemented as a software only solution (e.g., an installation on an existing server). In addition, the method and system of updating an intent space and estimating intent based on an intent space as disclosed herein may be implemented as a firmware, firmware/software combination, firmware/hardware combination, or a hardware/firmware/software combination.

While the foregoing has described what are considered to constitute the present teachings and/or other examples, it is understood that various modifications may be made thereto and that the subject matter disclosed herein may be implemented in various forms and examples, and that the teachings may be applied in numerous applications, only some of which have been described herein. It is intended by the following claims to claim any and all applications, modifications and variations that fall within the true scope of the present teachings. 

1. A method, implemented on a computing device having at least one processor, storage, and a communication platform capable of connecting to a network for updating an intent space, the method comprising: obtaining an initial intent space, wherein each intent in the initial intent space is characterized in one or more dimensions; receiving at least one model, each of which providing features in each of the one or more dimensions and relationship thereof; determining a new intent associated with an intent in the initial intent space based on the at least one model; and updating, based on the new intent, the initial intent space to derive an updated intent space.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the initial intent space is created with respect to a person; or with respect to a general population.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more dimensions include: actions; and domains.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one model includes: a domain taxonomy; and an action graph.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the relationship includes a closeness between different features in a dimension.
 6. A method, implemented on a computing device having at least one processor, storage, and a communication platform capable of connecting to a network for estimating intent based on an intent space having a plurality of dimensions, the method comprising: receiving an input from a person; analyzing the input to determine one or more features in at least one of the plurality of dimensions in the intent space; and determining an intent in the intent space based on the one or more features.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the step of determining comprises: determining whether a number of the one or more features equals to a number of the plurality of dimension; and identifying the intent in the intent space based on the one or more features if the result of the determining is positive.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the step of determining comprises: if the result of the determining is negative, obtaining contextual information related to the input; identifying a plurality of intent candidates from the intent space based on the one or more features; and selecting the intent from the plurality of intent candidates based on the contextual information.
 9. A non-transitory, machine-readable medium having information recorded thereon for updating an intent space, wherein the information, when read by a machine, causes the machine to perform the steps of: obtaining an initial intent space, wherein each intent in the initial intent space is characterized in one or more dimensions; receiving at least one model, each of which providing features in each of the one or more dimensions and relationship thereof; determining a new intent associated with an intent in the initial intent space based on the at least one model; and updating, based on the new intent, the initial intent space to derive an updated intent space.
 10. The medium of claim 9, wherein the initial intent space is created with respect to a person; or with respect to a general population.
 11. The medium of claim 9, wherein the one or more dimensions include: actions; and domains.
 12. The medium of claim 9, wherein the at least one model includes: a domain taxonomy; and an action graph.
 13. The medium of claim 9, wherein the relationship includes a closeness between different features in a dimension.
 14. The method of claim 4, wherein the domain taxonomy includes a plurality of domain of knowledge and closeness therebetween.
 15. The method of claim 4, wherein the action graph includes a plurality of actions and relationships therebetween.
 16. The method of claim 1, wherein each intent in the intent space is associated with a set of attributes include at least one of species information, personal information, historical information, temporal attributes, and locale attributes.
 17. The medium of claim 12, wherein the domain taxonomy includes a plurality of domain of knowledge and closeness therebetween.
 18. The medium of claim 12, wherein the action graph includes a plurality of actions and relationships therebetween.
 19. The medium of claim 9, wherein each intent in the intent space is associated with a set of attributes include at least one of species information, personal information, historical information, temporal attributes, and locale attributes.
 20. The method of claim 6, wherein plurality of dimensions include actions and domains. 